Photographs sit there, stationary. They hang on a door or wall, sit in an album or on a cell phone.
They break our evolutionary convention of time and, in an act of transcendence, transform a single moment into a perpetual state of being.
And the world continues to turn.
Sometimes, we question the power of photographs–their effect is not immediately evident.
Their power is a work of alchemy, and photographs are undoubtedly magic.
I think about the photographs that exist in my home:
The mother laughing while holding her baby, a sea of warm blue and white surrounding them.
The young woman leaning to whisper into the ear of a young man, their secret and his smile a powerful representation of love in the most unexpected and quiet of places.
The smiling girl sitting on the front of her father’s motorbike, her expression a glow that radiates from her face. Her father reaches over to give someone money. The heads of her siblings poke out from behind. I’m amazed at their ability to climb and balance on a single scooter.
These photos bring me energy. They give me joy.
But they also remind me of the darkness that exists in the world and how it is sheer chance that we were born in this place, in this time.
Or under that regime, with that chromosome.
I think of how close my fate was to living in another space, in another life.
When I think of what these photographs mean to me, what these images of true life do for me, I think of joy and love and light. I think of how even in the darkest of places, these emotions, and these moments, still exist.